On Intersectionality and Cultural Appropriation: The Case of Postmillennial Black Hipness
Abstract
Feminist, critical race, and postcolonial theories have established that social identities such as race and gender are mutually constitutive—i.e., that they “intersect.” I argue that “cultural appropriation” is never merelythe appropriation of culture, but also of gender, sexuality, class, etc. For example, “white hipness” is the appropriation of stereotypical black masculinity by white males. Looking at recent videos from black male hip-hop artists, I develop an account of “postmillennial black hipness.” The inverse of white hipness, this practice involves the appropriation, by black men, of stereotypical white gay masculinity and/or non-American, non-white femininity. I also argue that Shephard Fairey’s recent images of (mainly militant) non-Western women of color can be read as a new form of white hipness that revises the traditional logic in two ways: (1) by appropriating non-white femininity rather than masculinity, and (2) by adopting the practice of postmillennial black hipness itself.
Introduction
Power is a focal point for many—if not most—contemporary discussions of cultural appropriation. We have an established body of literature that examines scenarios wherein privileged individuals or imperial societies adopt and incorporate elements of subaltern cultures: white musicians have a centuries-long relationship of “love and theft” with Afrodiasporic musics, just as mainstream dance music continually draws inspiration from the gay club scene.[1] There is now a growing body of literature that focuses on the ways that subaltern subjects work with and against dominant cultural forms, norms, and discourses. The best works of this type do not isolate cultural appropriation from other power relations, but posit “culture” as intersecting with gender, sexuality, class, and race (among other markers of social identity).[2] In other words, “cultural appropriation” is never merely the appropriation of culture, but also of gender, sexuality, class, and the like.
This paper contributes to this latter body of literature. Through a reading of contemporary mainstream hip-hop (primarily the work of Kanye West), Idevelop an intersectional account of black male rappers’ appropriation of white and (white) gay cultures. I call this form racial, sexual, and gender appropriation “postmillennial black hipness.”[3]Postmillenial black hipness is a reworking of the more established appropriative practices of aesthetic receptivity and white hipness (itself an appropriation of mid-century black hipness), so I will briefly review these discourses before developing a detailed account of postmillennial black hipness. Though postmillennial black hipness inverts the racial logic and politics of these source practices, it does not, in theory or as practiced, tend to rework their sexual politics: what remains constant through all these variations is the privileging of heteromasculinity. Finally, I examine two instances in which postmillennial black hipness is itself re-appropriated. While Shepherd Fairey’s recent works featuring images of militant non-Western women of color can be read as a white appropriation of postmillennial black hipness (in the same way that white hipness is an appropriation of mid-century black hipness), Janell Monae (an African-American female musician) appropriates Fairey’s “militant non-Western woman of color” aesthetic in a way that, unlike Fairey’s or West’s deployments of hipness (which merely reaffirm it or instantiate it in a new way), actually critiques its logic and its politics.
- Appropriation, Identity, Intersectionality
First, though, I need to identify and argue for two assumptions that set the stage for the analysis below: (1) that (at least in the West) social identities are the object or content of all appropriation, even when the focus of the appropriation is an object or a style, and (2) that social identities are intersectional. Regarding (1): In my work, both here and in other venues, I address the appropriation of identities and identity markers—for example, white hipsters appropriate racially- and class-marked identities when they wear “native”-themed clothes or trucker hats. I think there is a strong case to be made that social identity is the content or object of all appropriation, cultural or otherwise. Marx argues that in a commodity economy, social relations are transacted through and in terms of relations among exchangeable objects (i.e., commodities)—this is what he terms “commodity fetishism.”[4] These sorts of fetishistic interactions happen all the time: people bond or argue based on their allegiances to professional sports franchises, clothing brands, or musicians. These objects serve as vehicles for the performance of various aspects of one’s social identity (this is more or less Dick Hebdige’s point about style).[5]In this sense, then, commodities have not only a monetary “exchange value,” but also a social “exchange value.” Separate from their “use value” (i.e., material function)[6], cultural artifacts and practices are valued for the social work that they accomplish—they are, in Marx’s terms, “a social hieroglyphic” (Marx, 322). So, for example, it is not uncommon for Westerners to get gibberish Kanji tattoos; if the Kanji was being chosen for its use value—communication—and not its “social exchange value”—various stereotypes about Asians, Asian culture, or an attempt to dis-identify with mainstream Western culture—it is likely that more care and attention would be given to the tattoos’ grammar and syntax. What gets appropriated, then, is not so much the use value of an artifact or a practice, but its social exchange value—i.e., the social identities it symbolizes.
Next, regarding (2): It is widely accepted in contemporary feminist theory that social identities are “intersectional,” i.e., that they have “multiple grounds” (Crenshaw, 328).[7] Race, gender, class, sexuality, and so on are neither separable nor self-sufficient. They are, rather, mutually constitutive: one’s gender identity conditions and is conditioned by one’s racial identity, just as they are both dependent upon one’s class, sexuality, bodily ability, and other social identities. Thus, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw argues that a robust understanding of misogyny and racism “cannot be captured wholly by looking separately at the race or gender dimensions of those experiences” (Crenshaw, 358). A rigorous and complete account of patriarchy attends to white privilege, heteronormativity, Eurocentrism, capitalism, ableism, and so on. Similarly, gender, sexuality, class consciousness, and other identity categories will be key components in any solid analysis of cultural appropriation.
In what follows, I offer a genealogy of a particular type of hipness that that traces the intersecting identities it subjects to appropriation and dis-identification. To begin, I argue that hipness is a twentieth-century revision of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century notions of aesthetic receptivity.
- Aesthetic Receptivity and White Hipness
Because this is a topic that I have discussed extensively in other venues, I will keep this summary brief and narrowly focused.[8]Traditional accounts of both aesthetic receptivity and white hipness focus on white, hetero-male subjects’ appropriation of femininity and blackness as means to achieve heightened creativity and affectivity. They are both practices wherein the white heteromasculine subject’s ability to master the perceived threats posed by femininity and blackness (e.g., passivity, irrationality) is offered as evidence of his superiority over not only women and blacks, but, more importantly, over other white hetero men. In both aesthetic receptivity and white hipness, the normatively white hetero-masculine subjects feels alienated, by his white heteromasculinity (its rationality, enlightenment, self-mastery, etc.), from bodily and aesthetic affect. As a remedy for this alienation, he appropriates stereotypical features of feminized, queer, working-class, and racially subaltern identities, e.g., intuitiveness, closeness to nature, expressivity, authenticity, anti-establishment dissent, etc. Unlike women, queers, the working-class, and non-whites, the white heteromasculine subject is thought to possess the rationality, strength, enlightenment, (i.e., the stereotypical attributes of white heteromasculinity) required to discipline and, indeed, sublimate the very qualities that, when they appear in non-white, non-heteromasculine bodies, are cited as evidence of these subaltern subjects’ inferiority. In this way, the Kantian spectator can experience the sublimity of Alpine peaks; he uses his reason to keep his fear in check. In sum, aesthetic receptivity and white hipness both appropriate non-white, non-heteromasculine identities as means of dis-identifying with mainstream white patriarchy. Moreover, this dis-identification with mainstream white heteromasculinity does not de-center whiteness, heteronormativity, or masculinity; it is meant to refocus privilege on an increasingly elite group.
Aesthetic receptivity and white hipness follow a common logic: to appropriate devalued masculinities and a near infinite variety of femininities in order to dis-identify with mainstream norms and establish one’s elite status among already-privileged groups. In “postmillennial black hipness,” the variables in the equation are changed, but the general structure remains the same. In the next section, I discuss Kanye West’s attempts to dis-identify with stereotypical urban black masculinity and prove his superiority over other rappers by appropriating (often white) gay masculinities and non-American, non-white femininities.
- Postmillenial Black Hipness
The inverse of white hipness, postmillennial black hipness is an identification with stereotypical whiteness (and often “gayness” or femininity) whereby one adopts and re-values the very thing that supposedly inhibits whites’ access to aesthetic receptivity: the body alienated, by technology, from its capacities for expressivity and heterosexual desire. It is a racially progressive, technologically avant-garde, yet reactionarily patriarchial reworking of aesthetic receptivity and white hipness. For example, while Kanye West’s recent work may invertwhite hipness’s racial logic, he continues to privilege masculinity and instrumentalize both femininity and living women. Thus, while postmillennial black hipness may appear to be more progressive than these latter discourses, all, in the end, instrumentalize and exclude women/femininity as means to reinforce the “propriety” of certain versions of masculinity.
In this section, I define postmillennial black hipness through an examination of West’s appropriation of white male hipness, white femininity, and white bourgeois gay identity. In the second part, I closely read the video for his 2007 track “Stronger” to argue that while postmillennial black hipness may invert the racial politics of traditional discourses of gendered heteronormative cultural appropriation, it continues to privilege heteromasculinity.
- “Swagger like Mick Jagger”
In his most recent album 808s and Heartbreak, and his ongoing debate with Jay-Z over the relative masculinity of “skinny jeans,” AutoTune, and commercial success, Kanye West has deployed various identifications with normative white heteromasculinity and stereotypical gay masculinity as a way of dis-identifying with the urban black masculinity that rappers usually perform (the very thing that white hipness/receptivity seeks to appropriate). As in white hipness, where the initial dis-identification with whiteness is intended as proof of one’s superiority over other whites, West’s attempts to dis-identify with “ghetto” black masculinity is part of his attempt to prove his superiority over all other (black, male) rappers.
Whereas white hipness is a response to anxieties over technologically-mediated passivization and the consequent tenuousness of hetero-masculine gender identity, West’s black hipness identifies with precisely these things in order to dis-identify with supposedly all-too-“real” (i.e., underclass, ghettocentric, digitally divided) and hypersexual black masculinity.[9] First, West’s fascination with electronic music reached new heights in 2008’s 808s and Heartbreak, an album that is as much a tribute to the Roland TR 808 synthesizer as it is to his deceased mother. Significantly, West does not rap (much) on this album; his vocal delivery is primarily AutoTuned and otherwise digitally effected singing. Indeed, West cites not rappers as a primary inspiration for his album, but Gary Numan, the British new-wave performer of such songs as “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?”[10] In addition to abandoning the “rap” aesthetic in favor of white/European minimalist electronic music, West’s dis-identification with stereotypical “urban” or “hip-hop” black masculinity has begun to take the form of explicit identifications with white European males.
In his appearance on TI’s 2008 track “Swagger Like Us,”[11] West positively compares himself to Christopher Columbus and Mick Jagger – two white European males whose “fame” notoriously comes at the expense of non-whites.[12] First, in reference to being the first rapper on the track, West claims “I’m Christopher Columbus/Y’all just da pilgrims”; later, he states, “My swagger is Mick Jagger”. West’s white identifications signify innovation and conquest: Columbus “discovered” the Americas, and Jagger’s band initiated the “Second British Invasion”. In appropriating Mick Jagger’s “swagger,” West both references and inverts the traditional logic of white hipness: the Rolling Stones score their first hit single with a song they stole from Bobby Womack, and Jagger’s “swagger” is notoriously modeled on black masculine embodiment. West dis-identifies with stereotypical black masculinity by identifying with a white British man whose musical and corporeal stylings are themselves modeled on stereotypes about black men.[13]
West appropriates not only white heteromasculinity, but also a very stereotypical white gay masculinity.Couture fashion and high-concept design are the means by which West enacts an identification with bourgeois gay identity. While super-baggy jeans are a staple of hip-hop style, West tends to wear tight-fitting pants, which at that time were trendy among black and white hipsters and fashionistas. In an interview promoting 808s, West’s failure to look like a rapper is tied to his revaluation of “gay” appearance.[14] While the article (and West) seem at pains to assert West’s heterosexuality,[15] West nevertheless espouses a (somewhat ambivalent) thesis on his revaluation of the term “gay”:
‘I like to embody titles, y’know, or words that have negative connotations, and explain why that’s good. Take the word gay – like, in hip-hop, that’s a negative thing, right? But in the past two three years, all the gay people I’ve encountered have been, like, really, really, extremely dope. Y’know, I haven’t like, gone to a gay bar, nor do I ever plan to. But where I would talk to a gay person – the conversation would be mostly around, like, art or design – it’d be really dope. From a design standpoint, kids’ll say, “Dude, those pants are gay.” But if it’s, like, good, good, good fashion-level, design-level stuff, where it’s on a higher level than the average commercial design stuff, it’s, like, gay people that do that. I think that should be said as a compliment. Like, “Dude, that’s so good it’s almost…gay”’ (West, cited in Bastian).
Simultaneously playing on stereotypes about gay males’ ingenuity in art and design and emphatically denying his own proclivity for any other part of gay culture or gay identity, West (thinks he) is revaluing the term “gay”.[16] The “Louis Vuitton Don” expresses his musical innovation and cultural impact by appropriating the sexuality of Louis Vuitton’s head designer, Marc Jacobs.[17] West appropriates gay identity in order to demonstrate his superiority over other black male rappers: his product is more “high-end” and “culturally impacting”.[18]
This “cultural impact” is emphasized in the LMFAO remix of 808’s “Paranoid,”[19] in which West’s“cultural impact” is cited as evidence against those who would question his sexuality and his musical choices. Because the first verse concludes with the claim “don’t blame it on the AutoTune,” the track is likely a response to Jay-Z’s “Death of AutoTune”.[20] I want to briefly discuss the Jay-Z track because it contextualizes West’s claims about technology, commercial success, and social identity.
DOA’s lyrics are structured by a hierarchial gender binary that opposes devalued feminized phenomena (AutoTune, melody, tight pants) to desirable masculinized ones (violence, male anatomy, "hardness" as bodily comportment and "hardness" as in un-melodic difficult listening). Arguing somewhat by analogy, Jay-Z claims that AutoTune is bad because it is feminine—the unstated assumption being, of course, that femininity is bad. His aesthetic claims about AutoTune rely on patriarchial gender norms, offering them as supposedly sufficient evidence of his aesthetic claims’ validity. This logic is used to argue against the value of both AutoTune, and mainstream success. First, Jay-Z characterizes users of AutoTune as both dressing and sounding like women. They do so because they lack balls (thus, no need to tuck, and no deep voice). In a not-too-thinly veiled dig at West, Jay states: "You boys jeans too tight, your colors too bright, your voice too light". This line calls on Jay's opening line in "Swagger Like Us," where he also contrasts himself to a feminized (indeed, gonad-less), tight-jeans wearing Kanye: unlike Kanye, Jay "can't wear skinny jeans 'cause my knots don't fit". The use of Autotune is evidence of, as Jay argues, "your lack of aggression/Pull your skirt back down/ grow a set, man". Jay equates Autotune with the lack of "balls" in both the literal and metaphorical sense. To use Autotune is to be soft, easy, light, and trendy; it is the opposite of masculine aggression, toughness, difficulty, virtuosity, and expertise. Similarly, Jay feminizes commercially successful pop music by opposing it to "hard" masculine/macho corporeal styles. His new track "ain't a number one record/It's practically assault with a deadly weapon". So we can infer from this claim that chart-topping popular music is "easy" in a number of senses: easy to digest, easy to listen to, easy to make, etc. As such, these number one records aren't properly masculine - they need to "grow a set" and become a little more cantankerous and more difficult to make and digest. This valuing of difficulty informs Jay's stated rejection of melody. Jay claims that "My raps don't have melodies" (even though the soprano sax in the background is melodic, as is the guitar riff, and the hook from Steam/Bananarama's "Na Na Hey Hey").[21] So, having catchy hooks (i.e., melodies) is feminized (b/c it's popular, easy to listen to, not tough or violent) in the same way that the users of Autotune are feminized -- they lack literal and metaphoric "balls".